Troy (film)

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Movie
German title Troy
Original title Troy
Country of production USA , Malta , England
original language English
Publishing year 2004
length Theatrical version:
162 minutes
Director's Cut:
198 minutes
Age rating FSK Theatrical Version: 12
Director's Cut: 16
JMK 12
Rod
Director Wolfgang Petersen
script David Benioff
production Wolfgang Petersen,
Diana Rathbun ,
Colin Wilson
music James Horner
camera Roger Pratt
cut Peter Honess
occupation
synchronization

Troy is an American feature film by German director Wolfgang Petersen from 2004. It is based on a script by David Benioff . The plot is inspired by Homer's Iliad . But it deliberately deviates in numerous points and tells of the mythical Bronze Age battle of the Greeks with the city of Troy . So the original duration of the war of ten years was condensed and the active participation of gods was dispensed with. Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector play the leading roles ; for Diane Kruger as Helena , the film was her breakthrough.

action

King Agamemnon of Mycenae gradually subdued the Greeks and united them into a loose confederation. When he and his force face Triopas' army, they agree that everyone should send their best warrior, so that this duel should decide between victory and defeat instead of a battle. Triopas sends the giant Boagrius, Agamemnon sends Achilles , the strongest warrior of his time. Achilles and Agamemnon hate each other, and Achilles is reluctant to submit to the king. He defeats Boagrius without much effort, and Triopas submits to Agamemnon. From now on, Thessaly also belongs to Agamemnon's sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, the Trojan prince Paris is a guest in Sparta as a member of an embassy led by his brother Hector . While the Trojans and Spartans settle a past conflict and negotiate a peace treaty, Paris and Helena , the wife of the Spartan King Menelaus , fall in love. When the Trojans leave, Paris “kidnaps” Helena with her consent to his homeland. Hector grievously reproaches Paris because he knows that it has brought war to his homeland without thinking about it, but sees himself unable to sacrifice his brother and therefore does not turn back, but continues to Troy. The betrayed Menelaus then asks his older brother Agamemnon for help. He sees the affair as a favorable pretext for conquering the envious, wealthy Troy. A victory over Troy would secure him undisputed rule over the Aegean. So he leads the largest army of all time to Asia Minor . Achilles, who longs to achieve immortal fame, joins the army despite his mother Thetis prophesying that he will not return from Troy. There, the aged King Priam has meanwhile taken Helena into his family. Contrary to Hector's advice, he wants to accept the approaching war with the Greeks because he considers Troy strong enough and trusts the gods to protect him.

The Greeks initially conquered the Trojan coast under the leadership of Achilles and his Myrmidons . Achilles captures Briseis , Paris' cousin, and meets Hector for the first time. He lets him escape back to Troy without a fight, because he wants to compete with him on the battlefield. Agamemnon, jealous of Achilles' fame among his warriors, claims the "booty" Briseis for himself. The humiliated Achilles then refuses to continue fighting the Trojans. When the Greek army stands in front of Troy's wall, Menelaus challenges Paris to a duel. Paris threatens to succumb and is finally saved by the intervention of his older brother Hector, who kills Menelaus. Agamemnon then orders the attack on Troy. The Greek attack on the city fails because of Hector, who also succeeds in defeating Ajax , Greece's second greatest warrior, during the battle . Forced to see, Agamemnon returns Briseis to Achilles, who continues to refuse to work.

During the night, the Trojans attack the Greeks in their camp and can only gather for effective resistance when an alleged Achilles appears who leads the Myrmidons. However, it is Achilles 'young and inexperienced cousin Patroclus , who fights in Achilles' helmet and armor and is killed in a duel by Hector, who believes he has Achilles in front of him. Shaken and angry about this loss, Achilles pulls alone in front of the walls of Troy the next day and challenges Hector to a duel. Hector appears and demands the promise that the victor will grant the vanquished the burial rituals. Achilles, eaten up by hatred, rejects this. Under the eyes of the Trojans and his wife, Hector is killed by Achilles, whereupon Hector's corpse is dragged into the Greek camp behind his chariot. That night King Priam appears at Achilles and asks him for his son's corpse. Moved by this appearance, Achilles accepts the king's request, releases Briseis and grants a truce of twelve days for Hector's burial.

Odysseus , Agamemnon's cleverest follower, devises a ruse to overcome the seemingly insurmountable walls of the Trojans. He has a huge wooden horse built to hide the strongest warriors of the Greeks. After the Greek army apparently retreated, the Trojans find the horse on the deserted beach. Paris openly expresses his doubts and would rather burn the horse immediately, but, like Hector before, his concerns are overruled by his father and the priests. The Trojans bring the horse to their city as a supposed sacrifice to gods. A Trojan scout who discovered the Greek fleet in a nearby bay is killed. During the night the Greeks climb out of their horses, open the city gate for their returned army and massacre the city's population. Hector's widow Andromache is able to save countless Trojans through a secret passage from the city. Meanwhile, Paris goes in search of Briseis, but first gives the sword of Troy to young Aeneas . He tells him that as long as this sword is in the hands of a Trojan, his people have a future. Agamemnon insidiously kills King Priam in the palace and tries to get hold of Briseis, but is stabbed by the latter. Achilles, who is also looking for Briseis and thereby saves her from Agamemnon's bodyguards, is again killed by Paris with arrows; the first arrow pierces his heel . The dying man bids farewell to Briseis before succumbing to his wounds. Paris, Helena, Briseis, Andromache and other Trojans escape. After the battle, Achilles is buried in Troy by Odysseus and the other Greeks.

background

  • The film was shot on April 22, 2003 in Malta and Mexico . Scenes at the beginning of the film and the interior of Troy were created in Malta. The city was elaborately built from stone blocks, with 13 meter tall statues and more than 115 columns. In order to show a burning Troy at the end, wooden scaffolding, extensions, market stalls and awnings were added.
  • The battles and the long beach were to be shot in Morocco first; For security reasons, the plans were moved to Mexico, on the Baja California peninsula . In order to create the huge barren battlefields, all bushes and trees were removed from a large piece of land and transplanted to another place, and turtles were collected and moved on the beach.
  • The city wall of Troy was elaborately built in Mexico - 150 meters long, 13 meters high, 20 meters in the area of ​​the city gates. It has been digitally extended on the sides.
  • The Trojan horse was also built and does not come from the computer. The inspiration was the image of a gorilla made of car tires and the planks of a burned ship. Several drafts were drawn and a 30 centimeter model was built from the best. The finished horse was 14 meters high, made of Styrofoam and weighed 12 tons. It could be dismantled, was made in England and was flown to Malta for filming and later to Mexico for beach shots.
  • There were only two real ships; the others come from the computer.
  • The match between Brad Pitt and Eric Bana was to be shot last. However, towards the end of the shooting, large parts of the city wall were destroyed by a hurricane. And Brad Pitt, who plays Achilles, ironically injured his heel during the shooting of the short fight against Boagrius seen at the beginning of the film. The rebuilding of the Wall and Pitt's recovery delayed filming for months. The choreography of the fight was created over months. The inspiration was Thai fights and the movements of speed skating. The fight was trained by Bana and Pitt for weeks and shot without stunt doubles.
  • Eric Bana had no experience with horses and learned to ride for months before filming began.
  • 300 Bulgarians and 500 Mexicans were used as fighting extras. They were prepared for battles for three weeks; initially without weapons. Marching was also practiced. The coordinators' instructions were translated into their own language by interpreters. Only then were they brought to the set to practice the process.
  • The swords used in battle were made of rubber; the paper arrows were shot with air cannons.
  • The burning fireballs actually rolled past the extras.
  • The world premiere took place in the "Kino am Potsdamer Platz " in Berlin . The horse was presented there and later for the premiere in Tokyo.
  • The film cost 175 million US dollars and grossed 497 million US dollars worldwide.

Director's Cut

The 200-minute version of the film, originally favored by Wolfgang Petersen, would not have been given the desired age rating of 12 and over, as some fight scenes were too brutal and a few glances at Brad Pitt's exposed body were too revealing. Therefore the film was cut by a good half an hour. On February 17, 2007, the Director's Cut of Troy finally celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale . According to the industry magazine Variety , Petersen received over one million US dollars for the rework . This and the fact that Petersen worked on the project for three months with up to 40 employees make the Director's Cut one of the most complex ever. The German director added u. a. added new footage and changed the narrative structure and rhythm of the film. The new version was released again on April 19, 2007 in the larger German cinemas and was also released on DVD on September 14, 2007 .

Historical references

Trojan horse , prop of the movie Troy , Çanakkale , Turkey

The film deviates from the Homeric version of the story in many ways and offers an independent narrative. The Iliad, for example, makes the Trojan War last ten years, but in Petersen's film the fighting lasts only a few weeks. However, it indicates previous battles that lasted similarly long and all turned out in favor of Troy. Not only the time but also the plot has been reduced compared to the original. Some heroes like Diomedes , Ajax the Little , Philoctetes and Neoptolemus as well as the Trojan allies Penthesilea and Memnon do not appear in the film. Likewise, the representation of gods and everything else supernatural is completely dispensed with; the action is secularized in order to make man, with his striving for power, fame and love, the real engine of the action. The omitted scenes include several important elements of the storyline: the judgment of Paris , who first conjured up Helena's robbery and the dispute between the Olympian gods; Cassandra's prophecy regarding the downfall of Troy; the death of the Trojan priest Laocoon , who advises his countrymen not to bring the wooden horse into the city. This advice is also given in the film, but through Paris .

Achilles is not portrayed as a demigod , but as a strong warrior who, however, is not invulnerable. His mother Thetis is an aged and therefore mortal woman in the film. In the saga, Achilles has a son named Neoptolemus , who plays a role in the victory of the Greeks, while in the film Achilles decides against starting a family and in favor of war. In the original, he dies before the ruse with the Trojan horse, in the film only when storming the city. The origin of the myth of the Achilles heel is interpreted: Achilles, who has been hit by several arrows, pulls them out of his body except for an arrow that has bored into his heel, which is why the Greeks consider it fatal.

As in the saga, Patroclus is Achilles' cousin, whereby a love affair between the two, as it appears in some later ancient authors, is dispensed with. In the film, Patroclus is significantly younger than his relative and, as Achilles' ward, is trained by him in the craft of war. In clear contrast to the original, Patroclus fights in Achilles' armor without the knowledge of Achilles, while in the Iliad he receives permission for this bluff. Agamemnon survived the Trojan War in the Iliad and was only murdered by his wife Clytaimnestra after his return to Mycenae . The film partly adapts to this, however, because Agamemnon falls through the hand of a woman (Briseis) here too, albeit for completely different reasons. Menelaus is killed in the film by Hector who wants to protect his brother Paris. In the legend, however, he survived the war and returned to Sparta with his wife Helena. Ajax the Great appears as a character in the film, but has only a few scenes. The dispute with Odysseus over the armor of Achilles and the subsequent suicide of Ajax, whom the gods had previously defeated and humiliated, are not discussed. Instead, like Menelaus, he is killed by Hector.

Priam is beheaded by Neoptolemus in front of the altar of Zeus at Virgil's , in the film he is stabbed from behind by Agamemnon. Paris apparently survives in the film, while in the legend he dies from an arrow of Philoctetes. The Trojan Aeneas does not appear in the film as Priam's son-in-law, but as a simple young man. However, as in the template Aeneas' importance for the ideal continued life of Troy is indicated when Paris presented him with the sword of Troy .

Awards (selection)

synchronization

The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book and the dialogue direction by Andreas Fröhlich on behalf of FFS Film- & Fernseh-Synchron GmbH in Berlin .

Brad Pitt's regular spokesman Tobias Meister had already dubbed the role of Achilles. Director Wolfgang Petersen, however, wanted a stronger German voice for the warrior and decided on Martin Keßler . Tobias Meister's voice remained in the trailer.

role actor German speaker
Achilles Brad Pitt Martin Keßler
Prince Hector Eric Bana Erich Rauker
King Agamemnon Brian Cox Otto Mellies
Prince Paris Orlando Bloom Philipp Moog
King Odysseus Sean Bean Torsten Michaelis
Breeze ice Rose Byrne Ghada Al-Akel
King Priam Peter O'Toole Horst Schön
Helen of Troy Diane Kruger Diane Kruger
King Menelaus Brendan Gleeson Roland Hemmo
Patroclos Garrett Hedlund Matthias Deutelmoser
Eudoras Vincent Regan Bernd Schramm
Nestor John Shrapnel Friedhelm Ptok
Glaucus James Cosmo Horst lamp
Andromache Saffron Burrows Bettina White
Ajax Tyler Mane Jan Spitzer
Archeptolemus Nigel Terry Wolfgang Condrus
Thetis Julie Christie Karin Buchholz
King Triopas Julian Glover Klaus Sunshine
Velior Trevor Eve Bernd Rumpf
Lysander Owain Yeoman Bernd Vollbrecht
Hippasus Ken Bones Klaus Sunshine

Reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

"Elaborate adventure and war spectacle based on Homer's Iliad, which leaves out the mythological world of gods and instead claims references to current world politics."

- Lexicon of international film

“Wolfgang Petersen had two hundred million dollars available and a world star that obliges. The story is, so the credits say, inspired by Homer and his Iliad, but the story as Petersen tells it seems strangely uninspired. "

- Georg Seeßlen

literature

  • Daniel Petersen: Troy. Embedded in the Trojan War. Friederici-SchriftGut-Verlag, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 978-3-938230-99-2 .
  • Celina Proch, Michael Kleu: Models of Masculinities in Troy: Achilles, Hector and Their Female Partners. In: Almut-Barbara Renger, Jon Solomon (Eds.): Ancient Worlds in Film and Television. Gender and Politics. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2012, ISBN 978-90-04-18320-9 , pp. 175-193 (English).
  • Stefan Servos, Anja Arendt: Troy - the heroes of antiquity. Heel, Königswinter 2004, ISBN 978-3-89880-320-5 .
  • Anja Wieber: Nothing new before Troy? Modern cinema stories based on Homer's Iliad. In: Martin Lindner (Hrsg.): Script history. The ancient world in the film. (= Ancient culture and history. Volume 7). Lit, Münster 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-8957-9 , pp. 137-162.

Web links

Commons : Troy  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Troy  Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Troy . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, May 2004 (PDF; test number: 97 912-a K).
  2. ^ Certificate of Release for Troy . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, March 2007 (PDF; test number: 97 912-b K).
  3. ↑ Age rating for Troy . Youth Media Commission .
  4. ↑ box office results
  5. ↑ TV Movie edition 7/2007, p. 56 → tip of the day
  6. ↑ https://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=4410
  7. ^ Variety : Petersen to 'Troy' Again
  8. ^ Cinefacts : Warner: "Troja - Directors Cut" in September 2007
  9. ↑ Santiago Ziesmer: "'Spongebob Schwammkopf' is only a small part of my work!" Retrieved on January 1, 2020 (German).
  10. ↑ Troy. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on January 27, 2013 .
  11. ↑ a b Troy (2004). Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved February 13, 2016 .
  12. ↑ a b Troy (2004). Metacritic , accessed February 13, 2016 .
  13. ^ Troy (2004). IMDb , accessed February 13, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Troy. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used